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Episode #104: Matt Abrahams
184 Plays7 years ago
Matt Abrahams is the author of the book Speaking Up without Freaking Out: 50 Techniques for Confident and Compelling Presenting which can help you address your presentation anxieties. Matt teaches Strategic Communication for Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and Presentation Skills for Stanford’s...
The post Episode #104: Matt Abrahams appeared first on PolicyViz.
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Transcript
Introduction to Presentation Anxiety
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policy Viz Podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabish. On this week's episode, we are going to talk about how to reduce your anxiety when you give presentations. It's a question I get all the time when I'm teaching. It's a question that comes up a lot, especially for people who may not present a lot.
Meet Matt Abrahams
00:00:28
Speaker
And so on this week's episode, I'm really happy to have with me on the show, Matt Abrahams, who is the author of Speaking Up Without Freaking Out,
00:00:38
Speaker
50 techniques for confident and compelling presenting. Matt's also a lecturer at the Stanford Business School. Matt, thanks for coming on the show. It's really great to be here, John. I look forward to our conversation. Yeah, me too. How are things out on the West Coast?
00:00:52
Speaker
You know, the weather is great and it feels a little summer-ish for me, so I'm very excited. Nice.
Motivation Behind the Book
00:01:00
Speaker
Well, before we get in, I want to talk about some general principles and strategies that you talk about in the book about reducing your anxiety and stress with presenting, and then some specific things I think you mentioned in the book that will be really valuable for people.
00:01:16
Speaker
both who have anxiety of speaking and those who don't. But first, maybe you could give us a little background about yourself and the work you do and why you wrote the book.
00:01:25
Speaker
Sure, thank you. So the book was written primarily out of frustration. So I have been teaching and coaching presentation skills for decades now. And in doing so in an academic setting, I found with my students that we would spend maybe a half hour in class on anxiety management. And then we would talk about all these fantastic rhetorical devices and social scientifically validated presentation advice.
00:01:52
Speaker
and the students didn't get past the anxiety so at the end of the quarter i would have them leaving say hey great class really learned a lot still really afraid and i can't use most of what we learned and when i look to find some resources to help my students miss again was years ago there really weren't. Any out there and i knew from my own graduate education research i had done that there was a tremendous amount of research out there on how to help people feel more comfortable and confident when they spoke so,
00:02:20
Speaker
I began compiling information just to help in my lectures and i realize that putting it all in a book would serve not only to help my students but could help other people as well in and since that time i co founded a consulting practice and found in the corporate world that this anxiety is all over the place and people looking to be more confident competent so this book is not only to help students but also to help business professionals and.
00:02:45
Speaker
It's been a lot of fun and very rewarding to see people who have very important things to say who for whatever reason they weren't comfortable saying it now feel better about it. So I feel very encouraged by the benefit that the book has brought to people. That's great.
00:03:01
Speaker
Now I know there's no one size fits all for reducing anxiety and stress, but can you maybe just give us the rundown of, you know, maybe the core philosophy, your core philosophy and the core philosophy of the book about how people can go reduce their stress, reduce their anxiety when it comes to presenting.
Understanding Presentation Anxiety
00:03:18
Speaker
Sure, and I'll start at the beginning. It's incredibly typical and normal to have anxiety when presenting. Some people have more, others have less, but especially in high-stakes presenting situations, the vast majority of people feel anxiety. And because of that,
00:03:33
Speaker
they need to understand that it's normal and natural and that there are things that they can do most people feel as if they're just swept away by the anxiety and they just fall victim to it and the core tenet of the book is that there are things we can do to manage both the symptoms and sources of anxiety so that we can feel more comfortable and confident it's certainly not a light switch it's not like you switch it off and all the sudden you're amazingly confident it is a process.
00:03:59
Speaker
and not everybody response to every one of the techniques that's why in the book there over fifty academically verified techniques i am thrilled if we can find three to five that will work for anyone individual so. The bottom line is it's very natural to have this anxiety and that it's possible to develop a sense of agency and control over it by invoking some of the tools and techniques in the book.
00:04:22
Speaker
So when you're working with a client, how do you, you know, you're called in to work with a client who has some speaking stress or anxiety, how do you, you know, what's your approach when you're working with someone? I mean, it's like, it seems like you're in between like a presenting coach and a therapist. So how do you, how do you come in and sort of tackle
Identifying Anxiety Symptoms
00:04:40
Speaker
that?
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah it's funny you said that cuz there is sort of a therapy element to this yeah i start with questions so the first question i ask people is tell me about what your experience of anxiety is like and people tell me things like they perspire or they get really jittery or they blank out so i get an idea of what some of the symptoms are for them.
00:04:59
Speaker
And then I ask that people to describe for me situations in which they have communicated or presented where they didn't feel as anxious. And we try to tease out what aspects of those situations and interactions might lead to less anxiety. Maybe it's competence in terms of the topic. Maybe it's familiarity with the setting.
00:05:19
Speaker
And what these do is they lead us to a very natural conversation about what might be underlying that anxiety. Maybe it's the concern of not accomplishing a particular goal. Maybe it's the concern that people of high status or impact are in the audience.
00:05:35
Speaker
And that guides us down a path for identifying certain techniques and then immediately after that conversation i talk about what i call presentation hygiene what are the things that we do before during and after a presentation that might influence our anxiety i give you a classic example.
Pre-Presentation Habits
00:05:52
Speaker
Many people because they're nervous about a high-stakes presentation don't sleep well the night before the presentation They drink an extra cup of coffee and then they notice that they're more jittery and less focused So the best way to manage that anxiety is to not do anything about the presenting It's about what you did the night before and had to drink before you presented. So it's really a constellation of
00:06:14
Speaker
places that we look to see how to get better focused on what will work for any one individual. Right, right. Can you give us let's say two concrete examples of strategies that people can use?
Anxiety Management Techniques
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, let me do this. I'll share one that addresses a symptom, a common symptom you have and one that addresses a common source. Perfect. So a very common symptom people have when they get nervous about speaking is they begin to blush or perspire. And this is a very simple result of your fight or flight response.
00:06:45
Speaker
speaking in front of others is perceived as a threat at some level and i can talk and pontificate on why that might be but the reality is people respond as if we're under threat we invoke the fight or flight response this increases our heart rate and blood pressure which drives up our core body temperature that's what makes us blush that's what makes us perspire. Simply by holding something cold in the palm of your hand you can reduce that core body temperature thereby reducing the perspiration and the blushing.
00:07:14
Speaker
We've all experienced this in the opposite direction on a cold day, especially you on the East Coast, John, you probably held a hot cup of coffee or hot cup of tea and you felt your body warm up. We're just doing the opposite. So a great way to manage a symptom of perspiration and blushing is just hold something cold before you present. That's a symptomatic example.
00:07:36
Speaker
an actual source. One of the reasons that many people get nervous is they feel as if they're performing. When they give a presentation, they want to do it right. Much like if you were an actor, a singer, or played a sport where there's a right way and a wrong way, we feel are presenting
00:07:52
Speaker
in communicating in meetings, that there's a right way to do it. And in fact, there is no right way. In my decades of doing this, I've uncovered no one right way. Rather, there are better ways and worse ways. So part of what we have to do to address the source of anxiety, which is rooted in trying to perform properly, is to simply reframe that and see it not as a performance, but see it as a conversation.
00:08:16
Speaker
Most of us don't go into our conversation saying i must say this this exact way rather we say i really want to accomplish this goal i wanna share a recent vacation i want to illuminate a particular point of view and we don't put pressure on ourselves like we do in a performance situation so.
00:08:34
Speaker
In the book, I detail several ways to make your communication more conversational. So in those two examples, you see one that addresses a particular symptom that results from anxiety and one that actually tackles a very specific source of anxiety.
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, and I think both of those are right on. I got the same sense that you have about the performance as opposed to making more of a conversation about sharing information. You know, people view it as a show, as a performance. I think that's one of the major sources of anxiety.
00:09:07
Speaker
What do you recommend to people who they get really nervous about speaking but they don't actually speak that often so maybe they only speak once or twice a month and so maybe it's hard for them to practice these techniques if they're not presenting more regularly do you have you have thoughts on folks who have that sort of that sequence of that timing what they should do?
Incorporating Techniques Daily
00:09:26
Speaker
Yes. So I do have thoughts on that because what I encourage everybody to do is to create what I call an anxiety management plan. And in the book, I give a few examples of it. So it's really picking and choosing the anxiety management techniques that you think will work for you. And it's three to five, nothing more than that. The ones that you pick should be things that you can infuse in your daily life and practice. So, for example,
00:09:48
Speaker
Deep breathing is one of the easiest and simplest ways to slow down the autonomic nervous system's fight or flight response. If you simply, every morning when you wake up, take three or four deep breaths, better yet do some meditation. If you build that into your practice, when you do have to give that presentation every month in your monthly meeting, you can get into that relaxed state more quickly by virtue of having done it every day. I'm not saying you have to meditate for 30 minutes
00:10:16
Speaker
hour, I'm saying take three or four deep breaths, get used to that, know what that feels like so it becomes part of a pattern and rhythm that you can connect to. Additionally, the only way you get better at anything is repetition, reflection, and feedback. So if you don't present often, find avenues where you can practice some of your presenting skills
00:10:38
Speaker
even though it's not a formal presentation. So the next time you go to coffee with some of your friends, think about some of the things that are important to do in a presentation. So for example, you might focus on eye contact you're making during your coffee chat with somebody. When you're on the phone with somebody, you might become cognizant of your vocal variation.
00:10:55
Speaker
When you're standing in line somewhere, think about, should I stand balanced? How can I appear more confident as I'm just standing here waiting in line? By building these into just your everyday habits, when you need to then employ them in a high-stakes speaking situation, they feel more comfortable and natural. So it's about finding techniques that work for you, creating that anxiety management plan, and then finding ways to deploy them in your daily life so that when you have to use them, they just become habit
00:11:24
Speaker
And it really makes a big difference. You know, I think back to my children and out here in California, we are worried about earthquakes occasionally. And in school, they do weekly earthquake drills. Those drills have become such habit that if there ever were an earthquake, and I certainly hope there isn't a major earthquake.
00:11:42
Speaker
They can then respond instinctively to it. So it's really about just that habitual practice. Yeah, that makes jump. Yeah, yeah, it does. And it's a really smart idea to sort of try to bring in those strategies into your every day. So I like this idea of, you know, you're out to coffee with people, try to, you know, engage with them in some of the strategies, some of the techniques you might have to use.
00:12:07
Speaker
when you're presenting. I think that's a really smart idea. The one thing you did mention in there was about eye contact. And this is something I always sort of struggle with when I'm presenting is the balance between eye contact versus staring at someone and freaking them out. So I wonder if you have, and you talk about in the book, but I wonder if you have some specific strategies and ideas about how people can engage with the audience, have solid, good, non-creepy eye contact.
00:12:37
Speaker
There's a joke in there about your creepy eye contact job. I'm not going to go fishing for it. So the second most prevalent question I get asked is, how long do I look at people? The first question that's most common in all the years I've been doing this coaching and teaching is, what do I do with my hands? And there's a whole section in the book that talks about that.
00:12:56
Speaker
So the eye contact piece, you know P I work with a lot of scientists engineers technical people they want a time they want to say how many milliseconds do I blend and Unfortunately, there is no answer like that. I like to jokingly answer you want to look long enough, but not too long Yeah, it's more of a feel than it is a science and and people will tell you when you look at them too long they'll look away they'll grimace and
00:13:20
Speaker
So in terms of eye contact, in North American culture, we expect it. So there are people who are listening to you, there are people we know who come from cultures where eye contact is actually seen as rude, you need to be deferential. In North American culture, we expect eye contact. So you just need to be mindful of what you do.
00:13:40
Speaker
I like in a larger audience in a meeting to actually put quadrants in the room so rather than looking at anyone individual i look in the general direction of people now i'm not looking over their heads i'm looking at them but i'm not singling out any one person and i wanna look at them in a pattern way. Now occasionally i will land my eye contact so if the big bosses in the room and i'm asking for funding or extra support i might look at her a little longer when i make that request to really have that connection happen.
00:14:09
Speaker
But i contacted something that we can practice we can practice it in our everyday conversation the reality is this we just need to focus on people so we can read information back from them.
00:14:21
Speaker
something that's very common though is that when we think we tend to look away particularly we look up now unfortunately the people that we're talking to when they see us look up they don't think we're going to grab some really useful bit of information for them they think we don't know what we're saying we're lying we're nervous so i recommend that when you have to think about what you're saying next it's better to look down than look up when we look down we look reflective when we look up we look lost.
00:14:48
Speaker
So, if you have a pad of paper, if you're in an interview, if you're leading a meeting and you need to think about what comes next, look down at the paper. It gives you an excuse. There might be nothing on it, but at least it shows that you're trying to go fetch something to think about. So, eye contact's tricky, but it is something that we have to really think about and be sensitive to. Yeah. I mean, the one thing that I, and you talk about this in the book as well, the one thing that I try to talk to people about is, you know, if you're there early, you talk to people in the audience and then you locate those people in the audience.
00:15:17
Speaker
In me that it's that it's more natural right because it feels like you know if you're if you and I are talking before my presentation and you're sitting in the in the fifth row and I see you and I make eye contact with you. It's that personal link that I'm looking at you and I sort of know how long is going to be creepy.
00:15:36
Speaker
Right? Because we've already had that conversation. So I don't know if that works for everybody, but that's one thing that I try to do is, you know, try to locate the people that I've already spoken to and then it does feel more like a conversation. And then I know instinctively how long that eye contact should last.
00:15:54
Speaker
I love that as a bit of advice and I do talk about that in the book. The only thing that I would warn people of is when you find those friendly faces, the ones you're connected with, you still need to make it everybody else. Because what some people will do is they'll just gravitate towards those friendly faces.
00:16:10
Speaker
But there is a tremendous amount of research that says anything you do to connect to your audience shake their hands introduce yourself before you present the better it does in terms of connecting your content to them and it actually serves to help you feel more comfortable because you have that connection and there's actually some neuro hormone. Stuff going on in terms of oxytocin being released in other things that really help you connect and feel more comfortable.
00:16:35
Speaker
Let's switch gears a little bit. I want to talk about the very beginning and the very ends of the talks.
Engaging Presentation Openings
00:16:40
Speaker
That's places where people tend not to really concentrate on, which is surprising to me because you know you have the most engagement at the very beginning and the very end. So first I want to talk about the beginning. So what tips or tricks or strategies you have for people when they're introducing their talk, when they're starting out, both in terms of how to get the audience engaged, but also how to reduce your own anxiety as the speaker.
00:17:02
Speaker
Thank you for asking this question. I have a big smile on my face. I am on a personal mission to change the way presentations and meetings start. Most people, most presentations start with, hi, my name is, and today I'd like to talk about. Right, right. And the irony and the humor in this is that typically the person is standing in front of a slide that says their name and their topic. So it's a waste. You miss an opportunity.
00:17:30
Speaker
I believe every meeting, every presentation should start like a James Bond movie. Not with the sex and the violence, but with action and engagement. If you think about a James Bond movie, they start with stuff happening, and then after that, after just a little bit of that, you then see the title and the credits of the movie. It's much more engaging. So I would prefer that people start their presentations and meeting with some kind of engagement technique. Take a poll.
00:17:56
Speaker
Ask a question. Give a startling statistic. Get people to focus on you and what you're saying. Then share who you are and give a preview of what's coming next. Your job as a communicator is to help your audience feel comfortable because if they feel comfortable, they can pay attention to what you're saying and not be trying to figure out why are you saying this.
00:18:18
Speaker
Now, I'm not saying you can't be harsh, direct, and challenging. You can, but you need to put them at ease. The analogy I use is it's like a tour guide. John, you would not go on a tour with me if I said, hi, I'm Matt, your tour guide, let's go. You would say, hey, where are we going? Why are we going there? What's going on? But if I said, hi, today we're going to learn all these exciting things about this particular location. By the way, my name's Matt, and here's where we're going to go. You would feel much more comfortable with it. Now, it's a great opportunity to also work on anxiety management.
00:18:48
Speaker
If you can create some kind of interactive start for a meeting or presentation, you change your role from being presenter to being facilitator. And this can really make people feel at ease. I work with a gentleman, very high level executive, and he gets very nervous when he speaks. His team is 900 people. So when he does a team meeting, he's up in front of almost a thousand people. What he does is he starts every meeting with an interactive
00:19:15
Speaker
So most recently he said, good morning, everyone. Let's watch this video clip. And he showed a two minute video clip and then he facilitated the discussion. Not only did it engage his audience, but it also made him feel much more comfortable because he was taking deep breaths while they're watching the video. And then he's discussing the video with them. He's not presenting to them. So how you start can get you really engaged and can reduce your anxiety.
00:19:39
Speaker
Yeah. So now let's go to the flip end at the other end.
Handling Q&A Sessions
00:19:43
Speaker
We can talk about the outro or the part at the end of the talk, but really, you spend some time in the book about the Q&A period. And that's another one of those areas I think people spend far too little time preparing for. So what about Q&A? And I especially am curious of your thoughts on Q&A when it comes to managing your stress, your anxiety, because when you're presenting,
00:20:06
Speaker
In some ways, it's a one-way street. You are talking and the audience is receiving. But when it comes to the Q&A, that's the opportunity for people to challenge you. And I can imagine that being a real stress inducer for a lot of people. So what are your thoughts both on how to prepare for Q&A and also how to manage the stress or the anxiety with Q&A?
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, so you're absolutely right. I would say about half the people get much more nervous during Q&A when you go from monologue to dialogue. The other half actually find it more relaxing because they feel more comfortable in conversation. So it's really bifurcated that way.
00:20:44
Speaker
In terms of answering your question about preparation, two things to suggest. One, be thinking about Q&A the whole time you're thinking about your meeting and your presentation in terms of developing it. So one of the foundational questions you have to ask yourself at the beginning of when you're thinking, what do I need to say and what does my audience need to hear, is what questions would they have? The best way to answer a question is to never have it come up. So if you build the answer into your meeting or presentation, that alleviates that need.
00:21:14
Speaker
Secondarily, a lot of it has to do with cognitive reframing. Most of us see Q&A as challenge and threat. Somebody's challenging my position, somebody is trying to show that I don't know what I'm saying, they know more. If we were to see the Q&A session as an opportunity, it's an opportunity for us to clarify, amplify, simplify something that we've said, it actually takes pressure off of us.
00:21:39
Speaker
So if we see Q&A as a teaching moment rather than a moment of threat, it reduces the anxiety and it changes our entire demeanor. And when I work with executives or my MBA students, they actually sigh. You can physically see them sigh saying, you know what? If I see this as something that's an opportunity, I feel better. Now, when the questions come in, there's some things you can do to reduce the anxiety. One of them is paraphrase.
00:22:03
Speaker
When you paraphrase the question, you actually buy yourself time to answer that question and give yourself a little bit of time of reflection. And in the book, I talk much more about Q&A as a process and structures for answering questions. But if you can do those things, think about the questions up front before you actually create the presentation.
00:22:24
Speaker
See it as an opportunity, not a threat, and use paraphrasing. Those three tools can minimize the anxiety most people feel around Q&A. Yeah, that's great. There's a lot in here, so I don't want to go through too much more of it because I want people to go get the book. But I did want to ask one other question. You mentioned in the book tools that people can use to help them
Using Tech for Anxiety Management
00:22:48
Speaker
present. And one of the things I thought was most interesting was on smartphone apps.
00:22:53
Speaker
You actually have a note in here that you use a smartphone app to monitor your speaking speed and rhythm. I was curious about that app and are there any other specific tools that you use that folks might find useful, either on sort of general anxiety-reducing apps. You know, there's like the Meditation Minis podcast that I like to listen to and there's a bunch of other ones out there, but now there are specific things that you like to use.
00:23:21
Speaker
Apps fall into three primary categories that I recommend people use. One is, as you said, apps that focus on meditation or breathing. And there are many of these. And they, again, they simply help you build a practice so it becomes more part of your everyday life. So that when you're in a high stakes situation, you just go into a normal set of procedures, deep breathing, visualization that you do all the time. So it's not something unique and new, which can cause its own stress.
00:23:49
Speaker
So there's apps that have to do with that and there are a plethora of them.
00:23:53
Speaker
there are apps that help you in terms of timing and syncing of your presentation. And so what I mean by that is one thing that stresses people out is they're afraid that they're going to have to rush at the end or they have too much material to communicate. So there are apps, they're presentation timer apps. And essentially what you do is you time them so that they vibrate at certain times in your back pocket. So I've been known to give like a half hour presentation
00:24:19
Speaker
and i set the app it every ten minutes to vibrate and do the practice i've done i know where i should be at those ten minute intervals and if when it vibrates i'm not at that space i'll speed up or slow down so that i am on track so i don't find myself at twenty five minutes into a thirty minute speech realizing oh my goodness i have another fifteen minutes of content.
00:24:40
Speaker
so there's a whole set of timing apps that can help you stay on track and that reduces your anxiety so it's vibrating in your back pocket nobody knows about it but it helps you keep on track right that's the second category of apps and then the third category is the one that you let with which is there are a bunch of apps that can help with vocal issues there are apps that help you in terms of vocal intensity and variation that's the one you're referring to these are actually apps for singers
00:25:07
Speaker
Singers need to hit certain frequencies of certain notes. It's like tuning a guitar and what they do is they show sine waves and those sine waves show You know bigger amplitude or less amplitude and that's all I care about so when I'm practicing a presentation I have one of these apps up in front of me and I can see that it's varied I just don't want to have that sine wave have very little amplitude or be flat line. That means I'm being monotonous So I use that when I practice and then there's another subset of these vocal apps that help you with
00:25:38
Speaker
disfluencies, ums, uhs, likes, I means, and you can actually program some of these apps to
00:25:44
Speaker
sense when you say those words in real time and then they vibrate or buzz and that helps you know in the moment that you just used one of those words and that's how you begin to reduce them. It's about becoming aware of them first. So there are different categories of apps that help with presenting. Many of them are not designed specifically for presenters. They're designed for other things like meditation or for singers, but we can leverage them to help be better presenters.
00:26:10
Speaker
Interesting. Interesting. Well, I'll have to check some of those out. They should, you know, give you an electric shock every time you say, um. They'll really stop you if you ever do it. Matt, this has been really interesting. I really enjoyed the book. So thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it.
00:26:25
Speaker
Thank you so much, John, and I really have enjoyed getting to know you and the work you do. It's really important, and I share it with my clients and my students. Great. Thanks so much. Well, to everyone out there, be sure to check out Matt's book. It's Speaking Up Without Freaking Out. You can also get more information about the book, and there are a bunch of tutorials and other materials you can get at the website, which is NoFreakingSpeaking.com. And you can get more information about Matt and some of the services and consulting work and teaching that he does at BoldEcho.com.
00:26:54
Speaker
If you have questions or if you want to tell Matt and I about your anxiety issues when it comes to speaking, feel free to reach out on Twitter or on the website at policyvis.com and be sure to rate and review the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast provider. So until next time, this has been the Policy Biz Podcast. Thanks so much for listening.